


The Way to A Crook's Heart...

by Telaryn



Category: Leverage
Genre: Cooking, Eliot Spencer's Cooking, Gen, Protective Eliot Spencer, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-25
Updated: 2015-12-25
Packaged: 2018-05-09 06:53:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,269
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5530064
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Telaryn/pseuds/Telaryn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eliot has always understood people best through how they relate to food.  And in the case of his new-found family, how they relate to <i>his</i> food is where he finds his balance and his place.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Way to A Crook's Heart...

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Teaotter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Teaotter/gifts).



> For Teaotter, and the prompt of Eliot having a special dish for each member of the team. I have long been fascinated by Eliot's relationship with food and how he uses it to interact with the team. Thank you for the opportunity to explore this idea in more detail!

If anyone had thought to ask Nate his opinion on when the five of them went from team to family, his answer would likely have involved the moment when Eliot took over his kitchen. Of course opinion differed on exactly when that had happened; Parker and Hardison were united in their belief that it was the first time Eliot had offered to cook Thanksgiving dinner for them. Sophie believed it was the point when Sunday dinner became a thing.

Nate, on the other hand – Nate was certain it was the moment he ordered Dominos for Super Bowl Sunday, just to see what the hitter would do.

Whenever it was, Nate’s kitchen quickly became Eliot’s domain. He cooked for the team anywhere from one to five days a week, depending on their schedules. He did the shopping too – Nate learned quickly what supplies he was allowed to dip into for his own use, and what needed to be left to Eliot. Shopping for himself was definitely more trouble than it was worth – his purchase of a bag of apples had provoked a twenty minute lecture on the merits of buying food from local growers in season.

The food Eliot cooked was basic at first, until he got a feel for what each of them would or would not tolerate. Parker required the most delicate touch of the group. A lifetime spent on the streets, in group homes or in foster homes of varying degrees of awful had left her with an extremely juvenile palette. She was nervous about food she couldn’t immediately identify, and shied away from strong or unusual tastes. Eliot tried to help her – encouraging her to watch him as he cooked and explaining what each part of a dish was for and what he expected it to do.

Progress was slow, but eventually he got Parker to sit through more involved dishes – even if she ate little more than a couple of forkfuls of what was on her plate. The day she actually asked him for seconds of something that wasn’t a hamburger or grilled cheese, Eliot felt tension he hadn’t even realized he was carrying ease in his chest.

The winner had been fettucine Alfredo in a heavy sweet cream sauce. No chicken, no “green junk” – just fresh noodles, cheese, and a sauce of his own devising, tweaked until it was almost a dessert. Fast, easy and filling, and it was the first real connection Eliot felt with the blond thief. He made it for her every time she asked him to, and often when she didn’t.

Alec Hardison in many ways had as under-developed a palette as Parker’s, but unlike her, he behaved as if he were almost proud of it. He complained any time dinner moved out of the realm of American or Italian food, but he ate nearly everything Eliot put in front of him – drawing the line at organ meats and some of the more obscure southeast Asian and African dishes.

Gradually Eliot began to see it as a challenge, finding something outside the hacker’s comfort zone that he would be able to enjoy. Three weeks of nudging his teammates professed favorite foods in new directions gave Eliot the knowledge that Hardison had a stronger taste for spices than even he had realized. A successful dinner of General Tso’s chicken that even Parker had enjoyed led Eliot into an evening of Thai food and Hardison falling head over heels for chicken in a spicy peanut sauce.

“Would you guys laugh at me if I drank the rest of this?” he’d asked, fingers playing over the handle of the gravy boat that held the rest of the peanut sauce Eliot had made. “Because, damn!”

Nate and Sophie had quickly agreed that they would laugh at him. Eliot – secretly pleased at the turn the conversation had taken– had immediately fixed him a third helping, which Hardison had promptly devoured.

Parker, for her part, was already deep into the Thai donuts he’d made and not caring what Hardison did or did not do with the peanut sauce.

Nate and Sophie turned out to be a completely different sort of challenge for Eliot. Each in their own way they welcomed every dish he set in front of them with questions and enthusiasm and plenty of compliments for his skill. Gradually, as Eliot began exploring the gastronomic possibilities Boston had to offer, he started inviting the two of them to accompany him. Occasional forays into Vietnamese, Cajun and fusion cuisine quickly turned into a regular once a month outing where Nate and Sophie would put themselves “completely into your hands” as Nate told him.

It was like having friends, for the first time in longer than Eliot could remember. He would pick the restaurant and the three of them would enjoy an evening of food, wine and conversation.

“What are your comfort foods?” he asked Sophie one night as they sat together on Nate’s couch. They had decided to finish off a dinner of Korean barbecue with The Maltese Falcon, since against all conceivable odds Sophie had apparently never seen it.

“Shepherd’s pie,” she admitted finally, after considering the question for longer than he would have expected. “Made with lamb – the beef stuff they serve in the pubs round here doesn’t taste right. And with a proper Guinness gravy.”

He made it for her a week later. Nate had been allowed to join them – Parker and Hardison had been nudged in the direction of the new Red Robin Gourmet Burger restaurant, with a follow-up promise of the latest science fiction thriller Hardison had been crowing about for months.

Nate turned out to be the hardest of all of them to crack. Discussions of food were inevitably met with a seemingly genuine interest in anything Eliot recommended, or was willing to set in front of him. “I learned to eat fast and not complain as a kid,” he admitted to Eliot finally, one night when the two of them stayed behind at the apartment to clean up from a truly epic meal of fried chicken, corn on the cob, and a salad so big Sophie had declared it would have made a meal all on its own.

“We had Sunday dinner,” he went on. “Same as you, I imagine – some weeks it was just us, others it was friends, business associates of my father’s, or relatives I barely knew. My job was to eat everything that was put in front of me and keep my mouth shut. I usually joined in helping the women clear the table – my mother liked it when I helped her, and it kept me out of range of my father.”

Having seen for himself the effect Nate’s father had on him – even now – Eliot could understand why Nate hadn’t developed the appreciation he had for Sunday dinners while growing up. He kept at his quest though, through experiments and conversation – having unlocked a dish he could connect with each member of the team, Eliot wasn’t going to stop until he had Nate figured out as well.

When success finally came, it was at a moment when Eliot was so wrapped up in the act of creation that he wasn’t even looking for it. For Nate’s birthday he’d decided to try a Cajun dinner featuring a whiskey risotto. The expression on Nate’s face as he tasted it told Eliot everything he needed to know. The man who had pushed aside his offers of kindness, who’d held him at arm’s length at every turn, was finally letting him in.

They had their connection at last.


End file.
